Charming and beautiful, just like the best Nintendo games with just the right balance between challenge and fun. There were a few stages which could be a little frustrating (when hunting down the bonus items), the camera controls could be a bit iffy and the gamepad elements often felt tacked on or unnecessary. That being said it was still thoroughly enjoyable.

I'd heard good things about this when it came out but finally got round to it through a humble bundle or something. It's a clever little game where you play as a lost soul trapped in the devil's shitty arcade and have to "hack" the game to get out, all the while playing an increasingly complex endless runner. It does some ingenious things to mess with you as a player which I won't mention here, but its short enough to use them effectively to great effect and move on without repetition. Fortunately that brevity is reflected in the price - £3.99 for an enjoyable few hours that is well worth experiencing.

Rick Dangerous on Amiga. A fun but frustratingly difficult platformer, it's really more of a memory test than anything else. If you step in the wrong place it means instant death, problem is there is absolutely no indication where traps are going to be meaning everything is trial and error so without save states you'd be expected to memorise the entire game and beat it on just six lives with no way of earning more... yeah, strawberry float that.

Head says 6/10 for the sheer frustration but on nostalgia alone my heart says 8/10 for taking me back to my childhood.

It runs pretty badly. I had some slow down and my computer is pretty powerful.

The story is really good, although I'd like to see how much your choices can change the plot. The telltale games aren't really games as there is no challenge at all; it's more a interactive multi choose story book.

They've really altered the batman backstory for the game. Lots of the characters have had their backstories changed.

8/10 just for the plot really.

This is what I really loved about it, enough to be somewhat (though not entirely forgiving) of its flaws like you mentioned. I was quite shocked how much creative licence they had, the take on Thomas Wayne was especially unexpected.

Yeah, that was crazy although in one of the comics Thomas he is revealed to be a villain

I thought the way they used joker was surprising and interesting. Nothing like the other versions.

Superfrog on Amiga. This was a pretty fun platformer however the controls seemed a little floaty and imprecise at times and there was a little too much trial and error in terms of which enemies you could attack and which you couldn't. A few bosses wouldn't have hurt either instead of just one which was super easy to defeat. I can see why people have nostalgia for the game but it hasn't aged as well a lot of Mega Drive and SNES games from a similar time.

Playing a bunch of Amiga games recently while fun makes me glad that one fire button controls are a thing of the past. For a platform game it's just not a good control scheme.

7/10

Last edited by IAmTheSaladMan on Thu Feb 23, 2017 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I went straight into multiplayer when I picked up Splatoon and only briefly dabbled in the single player mode, I passed it over as something fairly throw away. Wanted to play through it before the Switch version and my god I wish I'd done it earlier.

It's a fantastic way to get to grips with the mechanics for starters, I think I'd be a damn sight better online if I'd played this first. The constant variation and changing mechanics across levels made it a blast to play through and none of them were too long so I could work through it fairly quickly.

I'd heard loads about the final boss fight and it was absolutely brilliant, albeit very frustrating at times. There was so much going on, it was just absolute chaos and by the end I was just pleased to have done it but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hope the single player in the sequel can expand on it even further!

Arabian Nights on Amiga CD32. This was a really fun platform game with some basic inventory based puzzles here and there, odd too that you had tons of slots for items but only ever had a few at any given time. I might have given it an 8 but it loses a point for a couple of really bad shooter levels where you move too slowly to avoid enemy attacks and the enemies take far too many hits to defeat.

7/10

Probotector on NES. I'd played the arcade version of Contra but never the NES version. It's a pretty faithful adaptation although it doesn't look quite as good which is to be expected. Thank the lord for the Konami code as I doubt I would of got through this without it.

This is still a fantastic game, easily as playable now as it must have been in 1985. No, it isn't perfect and yes, it's been bettered over the years particularly by it's superior sequels but this must have been a revelation when it first came out. Think about it, the 2600 was still on the market back then so imagine going from say Pitfall to Super Mario Bros. The leap in terms of what could be done with a video game was tremendous.

9/10

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers 2 on NES. Plays exactly like the first one but with much better graphics.

7/10

Solbrain on NES. This came out here as Shatterhand and had you playing as a generic hero but in Japan it was a licensed game (from a tokusatsu series I believe), I played a translation of the Japanese version.

It's a really good game and looks great too with a lot of different themed levels some with a clever gravity reversing mechanic there is however some pretty bad slowdown during certain boss fights.

My biggest issue is that it's just too hard, it starts out really easy and the first couple of levels are a cakewalk but by the end it gets very difficult.

In terms of the gameplay I've seen it compared to Sunsoft's Batman but I'd say it's more akin to Taito's Blue Shadow only a lot more difficult.

Life is Strange - episode 1. I think this is free now on most platforms (I played it on the PC) which is a very good way of checking whether this is something you like without shelling out for the full thing. My view has not changed much from the "currently playing" thread in that I found it too slow going and as a result, boring. It seems like there is a potentially interesting story behind this, but it just builds far too slowly to keep you gripped. There are a lot of items scattered through the game that you can examine but serve zero purpose which is an annoying strategy as you feel you need to examine them to make sure you don't miss something important, but 90% of them are just padding.

Graphically this is fairly disappointing. It is older than "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" (which is a similar genre) but much less impressive. My disappointment was confounded by the fact that setting the graphics detail to maximum made very little difference. I suppose the one good thing about this is that anyone with a fairly low spec PC wouldn't miss hardly anything if playing on lower settings.

The very last few minutes of episode 1 have the promise of a more interesting game to come and a few people on here have stated that the game gets better, but this really needs to be evident from the first episode rather than buying into this based on a leap of faith. When this is on sale again I will pick up the remainder of the episodes, but based purely on episode 1, difficult to recommend.

Fortified Zone on Gameboy. I've played through this a few times over the years, it seems to be a game I keep coming back to. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination but it's a fun top down shooter.

7/10

Tiny Toon Adventures on NES. I didn't even know this existed, it definitely falls into the hidden gems category. It's a fantastic platformer with some surprising depth to it as you pick a partner at the start of each world that you can switch to at certain points. Each partner has different abilities that impact on how you approach the levels. It looks great, it's very well animated, controls well and has a cool little touch where Buster can lean on scenery, it serves no purpose but it looks cool.

I'm gonna give this 8/10 it might have got a 9 but there was one particularly cheap boss that lets it down a little.

Along with Halo: CE and Metroid Prime this makes up my top 3 of favourite ever games.

Having played them all originally in the space of couple of years when they were all first released I was never quite sure what was my number 1.

I recently completed Halo again as part of the MCC and felt it had stood the test of time.

I wasn't expecting this to. Took a while to get used to the controls again but when I did I found the village and castle sections to be as good as ever.

Didn't really enjoy the Island however. If I remember rightly even at the time it was generally considered the game dropped off at this point although I didn't remember thinking it was too bad. I definitely seemed to remember the bit where the helicopter turned up being quite good but didn't think that this time around.

It's hard to pin point exactly what the issue is. One thing that did frustrate me was that it seemed like it didn't get the balance right between killing bad guys and solving puzzles.

What I mean by this is that early on it seems as if you were either having to kill a lot of bad guys or you were trying to figure out what to do. Later on it seemed like you are trying to figure out what to do while bad guys are coming at you constantly. I don't think this suits the manner in which you control the character.

8/10. Overall still a very good game but I would now say that for me Halo is better.

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:Fortified Zone on Gameboy. I've played through this a few times over the years, it seems to be a game I keep coming back to. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination but it's a fun top down shooter.

7/10

I used to have that. Remember reading about it in Total and really wanting it. Finally got it with my Xmas money one year.

Remember it being quote tough. I wasn't able to complete it without the Game Genie.

IAmTheSaladMan wrote:Fortified Zone on Gameboy. I've played through this a few times over the years, it seems to be a game I keep coming back to. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination but it's a fun top down shooter.

7/10

I used to have that. Remember reading about it in Total and really wanting it. Finally got it with my Xmas money one year.

Remember it being quote tough. I wasn't able to complete it without the Game Genie.

I gave the sequel a blast last night too, Ikari no Yousai 2 also on GB and while it improves things over the original in almost every respect particularly it looks a lot nicer, has 8 way movement/shooting and is a bit faster paced they ruin it in one specific area... the map as it no longer shows the exits from each room until you find them making navigation pretty confusing.

It actually has a second sequel on SNES called Ikari no Yousai which is the same as what Fortified Zone is called in Japan confusingly enough, it launched in the west as Operation Logic Bomb. I've played a little of it but it seems really hard, you have a health meter but I couldn't find any health pickups.

I played it on the PS3 and didn't really enjoy it but thought I'd give it another go to see if it would finally click. It didn't. I don't get the love for this game at all - it is a tedious trudge from start to finish and the ladder/floating pallet/skip on wheels puzzle mechanics are woefully archaic. The combat is largely okay but not especially satisfying, unlike the stealth sections which can be when done successfully, but are equally hamstrung by some very frustrating moments.

The story is fine. Nothing amazing but handled very intelligently, save for a couple of bits where I felt it was a bit heavy-handed in its attempts to provoke an emotional response.

Graphically, it still looks to me like a last-gen game, though admittedly a very nice one. Not sure if it was a problem with my shitty TV (the posh new 4k Samsung is saved for special occasions like watching CBBC or Strictly, apparently...), but everything was very, VERY dark.

So, yeah - yet another game held in high regard that I don't like very much. As much as I love reading about games, hearing discussions about them, and watching Youtube videos, I really do lose enthusiasm when it comes to actually playing them (I'm two stages in to Battlefield 1 and I've already had a gutsful...). No doubt I'll be in here in a couple of weeks giving Zelda a '3/10 - tedious bullshit'.

Adventure Time Explore The Dungeon Because I Don't Know! 4/10 I enjoyed the humour and retro styled visuals, it's even fun enough in co-op, but as a single player experience it got dull quick.

The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure 8/10 Played about half of this game in 4 player back when it came out in 2005. When it became an inconvenience to get everyone together I just stopped, not really thinking it would work as a single player game. But you know, it's great, feels like a proper 2D Zelda with smart puzzles, villages and exploration, just in a stage by stage basis. Sometimes it's a bit awkward switching between four characters, but it's much better than the original Four Swords.

After a long hiatus, this fine choice (also, my first Uncharted) marked my proper return to gaming.

Admittedly, in the beginning, I wasn't overly enthralled with the SP; it felt like the majority of time was spent watching cutscenes rather than playing. Though, it did set the scene for the epic adventure to come and became less of an issue as it progressed.

For the majority of the 22hrs odd I spent in the SP, the blockbuster entertainment values, scaling the environments/exploration and gunplay were lots of fun and kept me thoroughly entertained. Though, not enough to tarnish it, the story did drag on a little too long and it's formula did get a bit repetitive. Prob won't go through the game again (thanks to my backlog!), but, will hunt out some trophies I missed first time round and admire the beautiful locales again.

The MP actually turned out to be an unexpected and pleasant surprise; pretty addictive and handy for a good, quick blast. I've managed to sink quite a few hours into it and will be returning to it with regularity, for the foreseeable future.

3rd time I've been through this game. It's probably my favourite indie game. I can't think of a bad thing about it. Gameplay is fun, the challenge is there if you want it. I love the combat and how fluid it feels.